24 and Schrödinger's Cat

This is a well delayed birthday post if you want to consider it so. Also thinking to move the blog to some other platform. Suggestions? So here it goes. I did turn 24 recently. It was an earthquake in life. I still feel like I was just 18 yesterday. Life’s accelerated too fast. Coming to a junction when some important decisions need to be taken care of.  

  

Being 24 is scary. There are major, life changing decisions to take care of. Being an entrepreneur for the past 3 years has fucked up life real bad. I'm tired of the this shit. I'm tired of being the one people look up to. Its exhausting.

There is a major push from the family to find a settled life. While everyone around is growing, I feel stuck up in one place. Maybe its just my frame of relative thoughts, from a different frame of reference, it might be the life to die for. When I look at myself when I'm around a bunch of people, its a celebrity feeling. My name precedes my presence. Its an amazing feeling. The life on stage is something people crave for. But to tell you the reality, its an emotional, mental, physical roller coaster ride. It has its several negative aspects which I don't want to get started with. 

I believe in myself. That's my strongest suit. I don't possess any special talents or skills, somehow things just worked out for me. That's the part I live about life - Uncertainty. Its impossible to predict the future, as one single tiny event can change the course entirely. Life is awesome - if you let it be so. One of the reasons there is a positive aura around me is I've been through several failures, and I'm not afraid anymore. I know I will rise no matter how deep I fall.

Talking about Schrödinger's Cat - one thing I've witnessed is we hesitate to take a risk, we try to calculate every step. But eventually, unless you step in to a situation, you are a winner and a loser both. The only way to test it is to be there. It will cost time, money, and a few resources too. Let's stay on the hopeful side and take a chance. Take that plunge. 

Being 24 means you gotta be earning at least bronze if not gold. If you carry that entrepreneur tag means you gotta be the next Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. I'm not saying its not possible, but why imitate let's be %firstname% %lastname% - You! I'm on my path, a lot of thorns in the way but another thing I believe in - This too shall pass. 

Oh and I forgot Love! If you are a woman, would you love to be seen with a person who is 24 and still figuring out life? I've got a deep dark path ahead of me which will unfold as I step into it. The success rate is a mere 10%. I'm a workaholic and hardly have time forfamily. In a world where success is measured by money and fame, its hard to find someone who looks deeper. 

The biggest question everyone around me is facing is called - What's next? Well I don't know and I'm pretty sure even you don't have a bloddy idea. I'm a person who tends to enjoy the current and let the next take care of itself. Who is it going to listen to anyway?

The Bible quotes; "I have plans to prosper you not to harm or destroy but give a hope and a future, says The Lord." I'm a believer, and several testimonials to back this. I know I will sail through life - Smiling!

Learning. Living. Loving.

I have a bad habit: I don’t write much. There are so many instances that have been piling up my head to occupy space in this blog. But, then it requires absolute peace for me to write. The sad part is, the times when I have peace, I don’t have my laptop; while the most times I have my laptop I don’t have a peaceful mind. Tonight, I’m travelling from Nagpur to Mumbai. I cried after a long time. Going back to the place where I came to understand my dreams; possibly to make them true – Somehow! This is another experiment I’m doing with my life. An experiment that might fail or might succeed. How I love this uncertainty of life. I didn’t set out with a proper theme for this article to write, I’m going to blabber this time. Just put out thoughts running in my head. 

I love travelling. I love Mumbai. I moved to this city two months back and the excitement to move to a new place has turned into missing my home to an equal magnitude. I’ve done a whole lot of things in past – research work, teaching, entrepreneurship, what not! But now I’ve come down to this city of dreams to know something, understand the working of cosmos - by testing myself. The world is a beautiful place, you can only wonder about its vastness. There are some lines that I have written; but now deleted. 

 

There are some questions I want to answer and write about them soon. Before that fire cools down. One of them is about the online revolution; Are we more open and connected with people from all over the world or we have truly made ourselves distant from the people in the real world? I am in dual minds, but I prefer dealing with real people. There was this sentence I read somewhere, ‘It is better to have one real person to know in the world than to have a 1000 followers on twitter!’  This statement will be ironic to several people. 

Second, I wish to write about my travel experiences – One which I took from Jalna to Mumbai a couple of weeks ago. That was when I had to attend the marriage of my brother and while returning had a horrible experience of travel. For the first time in my life had slept in the luggage section of a train – enclosed in a 6*2*3 volume box for the night. Following day attending office in that aching state. The other travel is the recent one – Two nights back; from Mumbai to Nagpur – travelled in the sleeper coach after ages. High amount of struggle and shivering in the December cold. 

I want to write about my love of Physics and the places I want to go – on the top is – Space! Maybe Mars even someday. I have a dream like everyone does; the path is unknown, the journey unpredictable. And now realizing there is a lot of ‘I’ in this article. I sometimes feel a bit self-obsessed; but then the people I meet, interact with, take life lessons from me. A twenty-three year old guy! People say I have a lot of potential, that I am special, I never felt it to that magnitude as others exclaim. There are moments that define life for me; extracting life lessons out of most situations is my hobby. Stage is life for me. The most lessons I have learned I share it with people who show the requirement for it. For a person my age, I might be too philosophical. 

There is a very little part of life that has come to my vision, and there is so much to know. There is so much to learn. So much to grow. Explore. Live. Love. The way I’ve been treated by the people I am normally around; I feel like a celebrity. Not boasting, just a thought. There is a gap that needs to be filled by me. Well, there are so many gaps! Life is taking huge twists. I feel like the water droplet in the shimmering sea I look at each day during my lunch time. That drop, living in the huge endless sea, shines not by its own but by the reflection of the sunlight painting a magnificent picture.   

 

There is so much to do. So much to achieve. So many lives to live. But my time is limited. I have this feeling – that, that time allotted for me is too less. Well, I’ll leave you here. Wanting for more of me, asking me to write more, and pestering me so that I WILL. But I will end this with three words, I love to call this phase of my life –

Learning. Living. Loving. 

Twenty Three

Birthdays are a special occasion in our lives. We have built and entire tradition along it. It takes us to a new level of understanding, makes us feel older, mature, and happier and it also makes us understand that we are growing faster than we ever thought! It was one awesome year for me, and I’m excited about the next one! Each birthday I have this ritual to ponder over what I missed doing, my failures, my weakness and try to overcome each of those in the next time. 2012 was a year of accomplishments and a year of dreams coming true!

I’ve turned 23. It’s the number of chromosome pairs we have in our DNA! Turning twenty three was something I was looking forward to! I’m not very fond of numbers, nor have faith in numerology, but 23 has been an important number of my life. Not just because I was born on that date, but because some important numbers of my life have 23 in them! My tenth grade board exams, the first biggest exam of my life, when everyone expected very least of me, I managed to succeed very well. The first person in my family to pass the board exams with a Distinction rank! 83.06 percent with 623 marks. I scored 823 marks in my first undergraduate year. It took me a total of 23 months to show off my biggest creation ever. My current cellphone number has 23 in it. So many examples, somehow the number 23 has its impact on my life greatly, and hence the excitement to turning 23 was huge. 

Turning 23 was a joyous adventure. Steve Jobs had quoted, “You can never join the dots looking forward; the dots connect only when you look backward.”  Looking back is termed to be a losing attitude by most success coaches. But I tell you, you can only count your success and learn from your failures when you look back! But look back when you have reached somewhere and not while you are moving towards your goal. Turning 23 made me realize my dreams, took me places I never dreamt of and gave a reason to my life which is more concrete than ever. 

I feel blessed to have the people around me who support me in all I’ve been through and even in the lowest point have realized my worth and made me scale up the depths I’ve been into. Turning 23 was a journey of success. There have been a lot of failures in the life before, but this year turned those very failures into success. I had lost a year of college, one that was highly disturbing and unplanned time of my life, but it turned tables. The last year, was the year from being a 22 year old young entrepreneur to being a 23 year old researcher, innovator, scientist and a better human being. 

I made my very first trip to a foreign land, roamed France and Italy, saw two Wonders, Eiffel Tower and the Colloseum which was the part of my first international conference trip to Rome. Travelling thousands of miles on air and a trans-country trip in the beautiful railways of Europe and witnessing the breeze of the Atlantic Ocean have made their impact on the traveler spirit within me. Being the only Indian and the youngest in the conference was in itself a huge achievement for me. Sooner after my return was another conference in Pune, where I got to sit with people scientists from NASA on the same table, a moment never dreamt of! Two huge achievements in a matter of two months were more than I could ask for!  Also, I have now almost finished my work on something called the ‘Batpod’ the first one in India and the 5^th in the world! 

It isn’t boasting, it’s a testimony. Life can turn its path if we keep and trying if we keep moving inspite of all the failures and forces that keep us down. We aren’t meant to live the lives the world wants us to, we can be more, and we can be someone more than just another face in the crowd. I mean to tell you, we have the potential to be great. But greatness requires not just hard work but more importantly patience and perseverance. If we have those, we can be great. 

Turning Twenty Three was a tale of success for me. I’m more excited about what’s in store now that I’ll be living the 23^rd year of my life. It’s the time to RISE. Deeshay Basara!